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The saddest part of racism is how it is used by blacks in the comfortable classes to silence the voices of blacks in the lower classes. Allegations of racism thrown at Sanders didn’t just dismiss white Bernie Bros but throws the entire cross-racial support under the bus. And it tramples on one of Martin Luther King’s greatest dreams, to join blacks and whites in a common cause of class war against an oppressive capitalist class.

“Last spring, a Harvard-Harris poll found Sanders to be the most popular active politician in the country. African Americans gave the senator the highest favorables at 73 percent — vs. 68 percent among Latinos, 62 percent among Asian Americans and 52 percent among white voters. It wasn’t a fluke: This August, black voters again reported a 73 percent favorability rating for Sanders. Critics, such as Starr, continue to point to the senator’s 2016 primary numbers among older African American voters to claim that his message somehow doesn’t resonate with people of color as a whole — and continue to ignore that, according to GenForward, Sanders won the black millennial vote in the primaries.

“So why does the myth that black voters don’t like Sanders persist? It certainly isn’t because black voters can’t relate to his focus on the working class. According to the Economic Policy Institute, people of color will form the majority of the American working class by 2032. In other words, the white working class does not have a monopoly on economic marginalization.

“Folks in McDowell County, W.Va., and inner-city St. Louis are encountering many of the same challenges. So, an economic message that includes advancing policies that will close the wage gap, raise the minimum wage, ensure equal pay for equal work, create jobs, make education affordable, and ensure health care as a human right is a message that cuts across demographics.

“Thus Democrats should be careful not to continue the false association of working class issues strictly with the white working class — a major fixation after last year’s election and an assumption of many criticisms of Sanders’s message. As someone who traveled across the country with Sanders during his campaign, I know firsthand that the narrative of working-class politics as exclusively white erases the stories of so many of the people who believed in and fought for a political revolution — and a government that works for all of us, not just a wealthy or connected few.”